Five Ways Forward

Super excited to be a sponsor for this event and hope you will consider a donation to help children and families in the Baltimore and DC area.

A big thank you to Five Ways Forward for being our tournament sponsor! ⛳️ We’re thrilled to have your support. See what President Colin McLetchie has to say about The Children’s Guild:

“Beyond having a great mission of serving children and families – incredible in and of itself – The Children’s Guild and its leaders have been on a deep mission of transforming themselves and their organization through conscious and difficult leadership development activities. This effort is paying off in so many facets of the organization, its culture, its service, and its people. They live deeply into their values of serving children and families and that their people matter. It’s an honor to both partner with them on their leadership and organizational growth and to support the mission directly through sponsoring this tournament.”

There’s still time to join us for the 17th Annual Golf Tournament! Register now at https://ow.ly/sPUt50T33Iu.

Ten years. It's been a full decade since I went out on my own and launched Five Ways Forward full-time. I have had the sacred honor and privilege of serving hundreds of people, managers, leaders, teams and organizations in helping them find their way forward. I am so immensely grateful and humbled to get to be a leadership and career/life coach, facilitator, teacher, teambuilder, catalyst. Ten years. Time really does fly.

So here are five things I've come to believe, and I'm not the first to say many of these, so thank you to many great teachers and leaders:

1) Deep, transformative change is possible - it's often simple, and rarely easy - and it usually takes longer than any leader thinks it will. Commitment, perseverance, faith, and courage are all required.

2) Upgrading the inner operating system of individuals and groups is required for transformation to occur and be sustained. And it starts at the top if you want #1 to happen. There is no escaping this (and so many CEOs want me to come in and "fix them" and aren't willing to model the way. Don't be that CEO.)

3) Leadership is primarily conversational. And if you want different outcomes, you need different conversations. (Usually starting with yourself - see #2)

4) We are almost always the ones in the way of our own success and impact (which is why #1 & #2 are so important). And leaders often try to go it alone - which is exactly the opposite of what's asked of us.

5) Leadership (which is really no different than "life-ship") is a deep personal journey to the self in service to others. It requires our whole self - Body Emotion Spirit and Thought. It is something we "be" and it's not kidding around. The spirit component is the emerging area and necessary to powerful transformative leadership.

There is so much more I could say, and I'll leave it with this:

Thank you to every client, every person that I've been in this space with. Thank you. You have taught me more than I could ever teach you.

Onward - forward to what the next 10 years have to bring. Celebrating my work anniversary. Feeling thankful for this

Had an amazing time back with the PM Hotel Group leaders after a two year hiatus. Speaking on “From Surviving to Thriving: The Five Moves of Elevated Leadership”. And got to connect with absolutely wonderful people.

Awesome morning yesterday with the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) leaders and managers exploring Leadership Converstions: Preparing for Dialogue that Matters. Their facilities are gorgeous (and available for rent) and everyone was in a learning space together. It was an honor to faciiitate this for them.

From Glennon Doyle this morning:

"We gotta meet with ourselves every morning so we understand what kind of person we're sending into every other meeting that day."

Stop torturing your (new) managers and your teams. Find out how here and share your ideas!!

Companies, please stop torturing your (new) managers!! You've done it, and if you haven't done it, I'd bet my next two paychecks, your organization - at one time or another - has. It happens in almost every organization, across the globe.